Work-related stress
I confess that with regards to work-related stress I am an enigma to myself. In times that should be stressful, I sometimes feel no stress at all. Yet I often feel the familiar signs of stress by the cumulation of issues that really aren’t that important. I decided on this topic at the beginning of last week when I suddenly and unexpectedly felt the familiar knot in my stomach. If I get stressed when I shouldn’t and don’t get stressed when I should, is there a lesson there for me to help reduce work-related stress completely and could it be helpful for others? In truth, I am starting this blog with a vague notion of an answer, and I don’t know how good that answer will be. For the record, I am not stressed by this!
There are different types of stress. The stress that comes from a tight deadline, or an assessment, or an activity outside a comfort zone, can be helpful. It can focus the mind and push us to do better. It is also a signal that we care about an outcome and want to do well. When stress rises above a certain threshold it becomes far less helpful. Continuous stress, if not abated, can be damaging to our health and prevent us from doing our best work. It is an irony of the human body that a primitive defense mechanism that was designed to keep us safe can now be responsible for the exact opposite. In this post I will address the kind of work-related stress that feels overwhelming. If you have an event coming up and you are feeling some nervous stress, I won’t be offering any further guidance other than to try leaning into it and use it to focus on getting the best outcome.
I pride myself on not showing signs of stress in front of my colleagues. I think that if I appear calm then this should translate to my team. I often imagine what I would do if a pilot of a plane, or a doctor before a surgery or any other vocation where there is a risk of serious harm or death, sounded stressed. Like most people I would try to remove myself from the situation and possible harm. The average office space does not come with those risks, but it still feels unprofessional and unkind to transmit unfiltered stress to the wider team. This doesn’t mean people should bottle it up, but they should give more thought to who they discuss it with to make sure it isn’t contagious. As mentioned above I do get stressed (as I am sure pilots and doctors do from time to time), but not necessarily when I think I should. I am going to share two examples below.
A few years ago, I was asked to restructure my business unit and effectively made myself redundant. I was trusted by the company to manage the restructure, even though I was personally impacted. I ensured that we delivered the best outcome for the business and treated our staff fairly, which was made much harder as this was 2020 and the world was paralyzed by the pandemic. I was put on a six-month contract that would be renewed if the business had sufficient work and projects to keep me occupied. Eighteen months later I was retained and given a permanent role. This period of uncertainty should have been the most stressful experience of my work life; however, I rarely felt any stress and never lost a night’s sleep. I frequently look back on this experience and question why that was. My best answer is that I had a very clear idea of what I could and couldn’t control. I couldn’t control the pipeline of potential work, but I could control my effort levels and make sure that any work I was given would be done to the best of my abilities. I also had good relations with colleagues, which is something that was in my control as I had fostered these over a number of years. I had full control over my approach to the situation, and I decided to ignore my ego and focus on what was good for the company and not for my own personal needs. We had new management around the same time, and I saw this as an opportunity to pitch ideas that they could use to make improvements and give them quick wins. None of this is particularly radical, but it worked to ensure that I emerged from a period of uncertainty with the right mindset and excited to seize the next opportunity.
Contrast this situation to last week. I had been travelling and I knew that my inbox was a little out of control. I had some immediate issues I needed to attend to at work. There were several personal admin chores that were waiting for me at home. I also had the vague notion that I was forgetting a number of things that may or may not have been important. It was probably this last one, a perceived lack of control, together with my inability to prioritize because I couldn’t recall everything I needed to do that was causing the stress. The stress materialized by waking me at 3am in the morning and preventing me from getting any more sleep. At that time, I am too tired to solve problems. I knew it would take me less than an hour in the morning to put a framework on my day and get control over my schedule for the week, but that wasn’t enough for my brain to let me go back to sleep. Stress, once present, also has a habit of making things harder because it can lead to procrastination.
This moment of stress was neither serious nor debilitating. To be honest it was trivial and passed quickly, but I share it to illustrate the contrast with the previous situation where I didn’t feel stress. It tells me a lot about what causes work-related stress for me.
From these examples I have a created a draft manifesto for having a relatively stress-free work life. As we are all different in our outlooks, this may or may not apply to you, but I am sharing it in the hope it might be helpful. Firstly, it is important to take control of all the variables that can be controlled. Prioritize these variables in order of their impact on you, but don’t forget that some benefits will be intangible (i.e being nice to colleagues will almost certainly benefit you, but you can’t usually quantify it). If you can, push out of your mind everything you can’t control. There will be times when this isn’t possible because the information impacts your decision-making. When that is the case, you may need to tell your brain that it needs to know the information but doesn’t control it. Try to remove all emotional response to the information that is out of your control. Build time in your calendar for planning. Making the shift from reactive to proactive is probably the single biggest improvement to reduce work-related stress because you will always be reasonably prepared and better able to quickly change course if required. Acknowledge and discuss stressful times with partners and friends. Often the answers you get won’t be helpful, but just saying things out loud can help you find solutions to problems.
One of my favorite sayings at work is “no one dies on our watch”. I can say that because I work in an office and the chances of something in the office killing a member of staff is very small, and the chance that it came from a decision I made is even smaller. I am not a doctor, or a scientist and I don’t work in a naturally dangerous environment with heavy machinery that needs to be handled professionally. This saying reminds me to keep things in perspective. I know that my worst decision on my worst day will have limited serious repercussions as it will usually be reviewed by colleagues and can often be reversed if necessary. With that level of security, I try to focus on controllable variables and being as proactive as possible.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I have no idea how helpful this is. Let me know any thoughts you have for avoiding or dealing with work-related stress. Any improvements we can make will probably add years to the end of our lives.
Next week’s post is on resumés (or curriculum vitaes as they are referred to in the UK). Specifically, what I look for when I am hiring and the best way to get onto the shortlist for review by the hiring manager.